Fantasy Football Draft Bars

Hubby made a comment the other day that he needed something sweet.  A cookie, or something.  I don’t keep packaged cookies or sweets around the house for various reasons, so his options were limited. There was some vanilla ice cream, but no real toppings. Well, unless you count chocolate chips, toffee bits & nuts. His response was to save those to make cookies with. Uh huh. So his only option was a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar. Poor hubby.

I contemplated another version of a chocolate chip cookie, but really wasn’t in the mood. Brownies? I could, but I thought cookies sounded better. What about a cookie bar? Yes! Now, just how to go about that? I’ve made blondies before, but I wanted something more substantial. I did a little surfing and came across this recipe on the Hershey’s website. Now, that was more like it. I had everything on hand and didn’t have to go to the grocery store.  Perfect!

I still have some whole wheat flour in the pantry so I of course had to test it out with these bars to see how well it’d hold up. I cut back on the flour amount just slightly because I thought it would help the texture, since I was subbing some of the ap flour with whole wheat.  All in all I think they turned out pretty well.  A little sweet for me though…blame it on the entire can of sweetened condensed milk. I cut them into 16 bars, where the recipe say 48.  I thought to myself, I can cut the 16 in half and have 32, but 48 bars are tiny and not at all what’s shown in the picture.  Oh well.

Where did the name “Fantasy Football Draft Bars” come from?  Well, have you seen Waitress?  We just watched it other day. A little on the weird side and the acting seemed a bit forced.  But, whatever.  In the movie Jenna (Keri Russell) is a pie baker who comes up with new pies whenever something happens to her and names those particular pies according to the event. So, in honor of Hubby’s draft last night, these bars are now dubbed the “Fantasy Football Draft Bars”.

This post is being submitted to the I Love Baking bi-weekly baking event hosted by Ben at What’s Cooking. Go check it out and post your entries in the forum!

Fantasy Football Draft Bars
Yield: 32 bars
Adapted from Hershey’s Rich Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars
Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
½ cup butter + ¼ cup margarine
1 egg, slightly beaten
2 cups dark chocolate chips, divided
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 cup toffee bits, divided

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 13x9x2-inch baking pan.

Combine flour and brown sugar in large bowl. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add egg; mix well. Stir in 1 ½ cups chocolate chips and all the nuts; set aside 1 ½ cups of the mixture.

Press remaining crumb mixture onto bottom of prepared pan. Bake 10 minutes.

Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over hot crust. Sprinkle ¾ cup of toffee bits over sweetened condensed milk. Set aside ¼ cup toffee bits. Sprinkle reserved crumb mixture and remaining ½ cup chips over top.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Top with reserved toffee bits. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars.